What does media access control do?
A media access control is a network data transfer policy that determines how data is transmitted between two computer terminals through a network cable. The media access control policy involves sub-layers of the data link layer 2 in the OSI reference model.
Media access control (MAC) protocols enforce a methodology to allow multiple devices access to a shared media network. Before LANs, communication between computing devices had been point-to-point. That is, two devices were connected by a dedicated channel.